MOHAWKS
A Novel
BY THE AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN," "ISHMAEL," ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON
JOHN AND ROBERT MAXWELL
MILTON HOUSE, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET
AND
ST. BRIDE STREET, LUDGATE CIRCUS, E.C.
[_All rights reserved_]
LONDON:
ROBSON AND SONS, LIMITED, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
CHAP. PAGE
I. "YOU CALLED ME, AND I CAME HOME TO YOUR HEART" 1
II. "O, TO WHAT END, EXCEPT A JEALOUS ONE?" 29
III. "AND ALL YOUR HONOUR IN A WHISPER LOST" 57
IV. "SMITE HIS HARD HEART, AND SHAKE HIS REPTILE SOUL" 94
V. "I'LL JOIN WITH THEE IN A MOST JUST REVENGE" 109
VI. "WHEN SCREECH-OWLS CROAK UPON THE CHIMNEY-TOPS" 127
VII. "THE SMILES OF NATURE AND THE CHARMS OF ART" 157
VIII. "STILL THE PALE DEAD REVIVES, AND LIVES TO ME" 168
IX. "THE DEVIL'S DEAD, THE FURIES NOW MAY LAUGH" 198
X. "THE LITTLE HEARTS WHERE LIGHT-WINGED PASSION REIGNS" 227
XI. "THERE IS ANOTHER AND A BETTER WORLD" 250
XII. "AND THE LAST PANG SHALL TEAR THEE FROM HIS HEART" 288
MOHAWKS
CHAPTER I.
"YOU CALLED ME, AND I CAME HOME TO YOUR HEART."
Another revolution of the social wheel. Summer was over, and Twickenham,
Richmond, Bath, and Tunbridge Wells were deserted for the new squares
and narrow streets between Soho and Hyde Park Corner. The theatres in
Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn were open every night, the opera-house in
the Haymarket was crowded, and drums and assemblies, concerts and
quadrille-parties, filled the very air with excitement. 'Twas said the
young people were younger than they used to be, and all the old had
grown young. The new reign began in a blaze of gaiety; King and Queen,
flushed with the sense of power, delighted to occupy the first place
after having so long held the second rank; conscious, too, of a
handsome exchequer, and a clever minister who could change stones into
gold; at peace with other nations, and with leisure to enjoy themselves.
The King had only one objection to London, and that extended to the
whole of his British dominions. He would rather have been in Hanover. It
needed all her Majesty's subtlety, all Lady Suffolk's subservient
devotion, all Walpole's strenuous arguments, to keep him contented at
St. James's or Kensington, when his inclinations all pointed to the old
German home, and the old German ways of thinking and living.
Lady Judith Topsparkle was a favourite at the new Court. Her beauty and
vivacity made her conspicuous even where many other women were beautiful
and vivacious. She and Mary Hervey were sworn friends, and Lord Hervey
raved about her fine eyes and her sharp tongue. Lady Mary Montagu
praised her, and won her money at ombre, being by far the luckier
player. Lady Judith's afternoon card-parties, to which only women were
admitted, had become the rage. The house in Soho was thronged with
hoops and high heads, and although only ladies were allowed a seat at
any of the tables, the men soon forced an entrance, and assisted as
spectators, sometimes betting furiously on the progress of the game.
Mr. Topsparkle went in and out, shrugged his shoulders with his highly
Parisian shrug, and said very little. The play was supposed to be a
gentle feminine business, for very modest stakes. The sums that were
spoken of seemed almost contemptible for such fine ladies. But these
fair ones had a jargon of their own; they talked and counted in a
cipher, and the coins that changed hands in public were but symbols of
the debts that were to be paid in private next morning.
"I protest, Lady Judith, I owe you a crown," cried Lady Hervey.
"And I am Lady Polwhele's debtor for a guinea," said Lady Judith,
producing the coin from a toy purse; and next morning Juba carried a
letter lined with bank-notes from Lady Judith to the Dowager, while
Judith received a heartrending plea for grace from a chaplain's wife who
had lost half a year of her husband's stipend to her ladyship on a
previous afternoon.
Topsparkle called these assemblies the mysteries of the Bona Dea.
"And I'll warrant," said Bolingbroke, "there is always Clodius somewhere
in hiding among the hoops and powder, were there only a mother-in-law to
unearth him."
Durnford called occasionally in Soho Square to satisfy Lavendale, who
was now at his house in Bloomsbury, living in the seclusion of a hermit,
although the town with all its pleasures was at his elbow. He looked
very ill, and was the victim of an abiding melancholy which moved his
friend to deepest compassion. To oblige him, Durnford left his quiet
lodging by Russell Street, and took up his quarters in Bloomsbury
Square, where he had a whole suite of rooms to himself, and where he was
able to keep an eye upon his friend, whose condition filled him with
alarm.
He had somewhat agreeable business in hand just now in the production of
his play, which was to be brought out at Drury Lane by his Majesty's
company of comedians. Upon the success of this play his future and his
marriage in some wise depended, for the production of a successful
comedy would at once place him in the highest literary rank. The actors
were all sanguine of success, and were pleased at the idea of putting
forward a new man. Mr. Cibber declared that _An Old Story_ was the best
comedy that had been written since _The Conscious Lovers_.
"I wish poor Dick Steele were in health to applaud your play, Mr.
Durnford," said the manager. "He was ever generous to a young rival. He
would have made the reputation of Savage, had that wild youth been of a
less difficult temper. But, alas, Sir Richard is but a wreck, wheeled
about in a Bath-chair at his retreat in Shropshire, and with Death
walking at his elbow."
The play was a success. Mrs. Oldfield, the brilliant, the elegant Nancy
Oldfield, the most admired and indulged of her sex, who could violate
all the laws of decorum, and yet be received and courted in the politest
society, the finest comedy actress in that age of fine acting,
condescended to appear in Mr. Durnford's piece, and her performance of
a character of the Lady Betty Modish type, with Wilks as her lover,
ravished the town. She had more grace, more distinction, than any woman
of quality in London; she was the very quintessence of a fine lady,
concentrating in her own person all the airs and graces, caprices and
_minauderies_, of half a dozen fashionable coquettes, adopting a shrug
from one, a wave of the fan from another, a twirl of her hoop from a
third--bewitching and enchanting her audience, albeit her beauty had
long been on the wane, and she was well over forty. It was the last
comedy part she ever studied; and she would scarce have undertaken it
but for Mr. Durnford's reputation as a man of some slight fashion, and
the bosom friend of Lavendale.
Nor was Wilks, the famous Sir Harry Wildair, less admirable as a fine
gentleman than Mrs. Oldfield as a fine lady. A young man of good family
and liberal education, he had made his _début_ in Dublin the year after
the Revolution, and coming thence to London, he had quickly caught the
grace and dash of the bucks and bloods of that statelier period. As the
periwig shortened and manners relaxed, he had cultivated the more
careless style of the Hanoverian era, with all its butterfly graces and
audacious swagger. There was an insolent self-assurance in his
love-making which delighted the fine ladies of the period, with whom
modesty and reverence for womanhood were at a discount. Durnford knew
Wilks intimately as a boon companion and as an actor. He had taken the
exact measure of the veteran comedian's talents and capacities; and in
the middle-aged fop of quality had produced a character which promised
to become as popular as Wildair or Lord Townley.
All the town rushed to see _An Old Story_, and the patentees were eager
for future comedies from the same hand. A single comedy had made
Congreve independent for life; and with the success of his play Herrick
Durnford felt that his prosperity as a literary worker was assured. He
had tried his pen in the various departments of literature, and had been
successful in all. He had won for himself a certain standing in the
House of Commons, and had Walpole's promise of a place. In a word, he
was as well able to marry as Richard Steele was when he took unto
himself the wayward and capricious Mrs. Molly Scurlock, and he had all
Steele's pluck, and a good deal more than Steele's industry.
Now then he resolved upon a step which to the outer world would have
seemed desperate even to madness, a reckless throwing away of fortune.
He resolved upon carrying off the Squire's heiress, and marrying her
off-hand at the little chapel which Parson Keith had lately established
in Curzon Street. He had always had a Mayfair marriage in his mind as
the last revolt against tyranny, and he had reasons for deciding that
the time had come when that revolt should be made.
It rested with Irene to give or to withhold her consent to this strong
measure. He meant to use no undue persuasion. Freely must she come to
his arms, as he had told himself in the dawning of their love. He had
not set himself to steal her, but to win her.
When _An Old Story_ had run fifteen nights, and had been applauded and
approved by all the town, from their Majesties and the Court to the
misses in the side-boxes, the apprentices in the shilling gallery, and
the orange-girls in the pit, Herrick rode down to Lavendale Manor one
October morning, and contrived a meeting by the old oak fence in the
waning light between five and six o'clock in the evening. His
ever-willing Mercury had conveyed a note to Miss Bosworth, and she was
first at the trysting-place.
"My dearest, this is so good of you," said Herrick, as he clasped her to
his breast and kissed the shy, half-reluctant lips.
"'Twas selfish curiosity brought me," she answered. "I have been
expiring with anxiety to hear about your play. My father's newspapers
told me so little, though they told me 'twas the best comedy that had
been written for years; and it's so hard we cannot write to each other
freely. I have been pining for a letter."
"Dearest, the time is past for secret letters and stolen meetings. The
hour has struck for boldness and liberty--for open, happy, unassailable
love. Irene, you have told me more than once that you do not value
wealth."
"And I tell you so again," she answered.
"And that you would freely renounce a great fortune to be my wife, the
mistress of a modest unluxurious home, such as I am now able to
support."
"I think you know that I would be happier with you in a hovel than with
any other husband in a palace," she said, in a low sweet voice that
thrilled him, and with drooping eyelids, as if she were half ashamed at
the boldness of her confession.
"Then break your chains, Rena; fly with the lover who adores you; steal
away in the early dawn to-morrow; steal across the park with foot as
light and form as graceful as the young fawn's yonder. Meet me at the
wicket that opens on the road. I will have a carriage-and-four ready to
receive you. I'll whip you up in my arms and carry you off as Jove
carried Europa, and we shall be well over the first stage to London
before your gaolers discover their captive has escaped. I saw Parson
Keith last night; he will be ready to marry us at ten o'clock to-morrow
morning, and his ceremonial will be just as binding as if we were
married by an archbishop."
"But can I disobey my father, prove myself an ungrateful daughter?"
asked Irene, with a distressed air.
She had been woman enough to know that this crisis in her life must come
sooner or later; that love would not wait for ever. She had pondered
upon this crucial question in many an hour of solitude, and now it had
come and must be answered.
"Dear love, you have to choose between that tyrannic father and me,"
pleaded Herrick, with impassioned earnestness; "the time has come for
that choice to be made. I have hung back hitherto, fearful to trust the
future; but I am now assured of a literary career and of Sir Robert
Walpole's friendship and patronage. I can afford to tempt fortune so far
as to take a wife. I am secure of keeping a roof over my darling's head,
and that the pinch of poverty shall never be hers."
"I am not afraid of poverty--I only fear to offend my father."
"That is a hazard which must be run, Irene. We have tried to be dutiful,
both of us. I addressed him honourably as a suitor for your hand; urged
upon him that my prospects were not hopeless, that I was industrious,
patient, and had begun to earn my living. He rejected my proposals with
contempt, treated me as harshly as ever miserly hidalgo in a Spanish
comedy treated his daughter's suitor. If you are ever to be mine, Rena,
you must brave your father's anger. You will never be mine with his
consent, and 'tis ill waiting for dead men's shoes, saying we will put
off our happiness till the old man is in his coffin. Let us be happy in
spite of him. When the deed is done, I have a way to win him to forgive
us both."
"What way, Herrick?" she asked eagerly.
"That is my secret, which I will reveal only to my wife."
"Ah, that is playing on my curiosity to win me to rebellion."
"Not rebellion, Rena; only natural revolt against an unendurable
tyranny."
"Do you think he will ever forgive?"
"He will, he must. He will have no right to be angry, from the moment he
knows my secret."
"You torture me with your enigmas. Why will you not tell me?"
"To my wife, my wife only," he whispered, drawing her to his breast once
again, and stifling her questions with kisses. "That secret is for none
but my wife's ear: but, as I am a man of honour, Irene, you will stand
free of all reproach for undutifulness. You can look Squire Bosworth in
the face and say, 'I am no rebellious daughter;' and if he has a spark
of generosity in him he shall take you to his heart as I do now, and
give you love for love."
"He is not ungenerous," said Irene. "But I wish you would be less
mysterious."
"There shall be no mysteries when I am your husband. And now, love, say
that you will come. I have done my part towards your father as a man of
honour. I have worked hard as journalist and politician for wife and
home. Am I to be disappointed of my reward?"
"No, love," she answered, "you shall not be cheated. I will be your
wife; even at the risk of never seeing my father's face again."
He thanked and blest her, in a rapture of love and gratitude; and then
came a reiteration of his instructions. She was to creep out of the
house before the servants were up; they rose at daybreak, but she must
be before them. There was a glass door in the white parlour where they
had all dined together--Lavendale, Herrick, the Squire, and his
daughter--so often last year. This door opened into the garden, and was
fastened with bolts which could be easily withdrawn; especially if Irene
would but take the trouble to oil the fastenings over-night, to guard
against any tell-tale scrooping of the iron. Then, cloaked and warmly
clad, she was to skirt the shrubberies and cross the park to the
wicket-gate. There Herrick and his coach would be in readiness; and all
the rest was a question of fleet horses and quick relays, of which it
was the lover's business to make sure over-night.
"I shall ride to Esher and on to Kingston, and make all preparations
before ten o'clock," he said.
Irene was not like Lady Judith. She never thought of her gowns, or asked
how she was to carry away her clothes. Not more than the lilies of the
field did she consider her raiment in this solemn crisis of her life.
She only knew that soon after daybreak to-morrow morning she would be in
her lover's arms, speeding away along the London road to be wedded and
made one with him for ever. That she was to leave a noble inheritance
and all her frocks and furbelows behind her troubled her not the least.
She had no lust for finery, or to shine and dazzle in some new sphere.
Blindly, and with a childlike confidence, she threw herself into her
lover's arms, believing him wisest and best among all mankind.
So in the gray cold October dawn those two met at the wicket-gate, the
coach and four horses standing ready a little way along the road. There
had been nothing to hinder Irene's flight, albeit her sharpest gaoler,
Mrs. Layburne, lay wakeful and restless as the girl's light foot passed
her chamber-door. Irene heard the short dry cough, and the quick
impatient sigh that followed; and she knew that her father's mysterious
housekeeper was lying there, sleepless and suffering.
"My glorious girl," cried Herrick, as he hurried her to the carriage,
"I half feared your courage might fail you."
"There was no fear of that, Herrick," she answered quietly; "but I felt
myself a rebel and an undutiful daughter as I crept past my father's
room."
"You will not think that to-morrow."
"To-morrow! What do you mean by to-morrow?"
"Only that I intend to beard the lion in his den, Irene, or in other
words to ask the Squire's pardon as soon as you are so fast my wife that
no fury of his can part us. We will not behave as most runaway lovers
do, go and hide themselves and wait for Providence to melt the paternal
heart. We will go straight to the tyrant, and say, 'You see, love is
stronger than self-interest. It is not your fortune we want, but your
love;' and if he has a heart he will forgive us both, Irene."
"I hope he will," she murmured despondently.
"You hope, but you don't believe. Well, we shall see. And now tell me,
sweet, how is the Squire's housekeeper, Mrs. Layburne?"
"Very ill. Indeed, Herrick, I fear the poor soul has not many weeks, or
perhaps many days, to live. It is a sad and lonely ending. She shuns all
sympathy, and waits for death in a proud silence which has an awful air.
Alas, I fear she lacks all the consolations of piety. I have offered to
read to her, to pray with her; but she refused with open scorn. She will
have nothing to say to Mademoiselle, who is all kindness. Bridget
detests her, and yet tries to nurse her and to do all she can to lessen
her sufferings: but it is an unthankful office. My father looks
miserable, and I think the presence of that dying woman in the house
overshadows his life. He has not been to London for weeks. He sits alone
in his study, reading or writing, as if he were waiting for Mrs.
Layburne's death. Mademoiselle and I have hardly seen him from day to
day, yet last year we were all three so happy together. He used always
to dine and spend his evenings with us; but now he dines alone, and is
shut up in his study till midnight."
The horses were tearing along the London road, past breezy commons and
low-wooded hills, between which flashed now and then a distant glimpse
of the river--a silvery streak across the gray of the autumn landscape.
Herrick put his head out of the coach window once in a quarter of an
hour, to survey the road behind him; but there was no sign of pursuit.
The chances were that Irene's absence would not be discovered till eight
o'clock, the usual breakfast-hour; and it was not yet seven. They had a
clear hour before them.
They changed horses at Kingston, and were crossing Wimbledon Common at
eight. The strong fresh horses tore down the hill into Wandsworth, and
now Herrick felt that his prize was won. From Wandsworth to the ferry
between Lambeth and Westminster was but half an hour's drive. The Abbey
clock was striking nine as they stepped into the ferry-boat.
A hackney coach was waiting for them on the other side, bespoken by
Durnford before he left London on the previous day, a coach which
carried them to Curzon Street in a quarter of an hour, and there was
Parson Keith in his surplice, ready to begin the ceremony.
How solemn and how sweet the service sounded to those true lovers, as
they stood side by side before the communion-table, in the shabby little
chapel which was to be the scene of so many a clandestine union, of so
many a love-match doomed to end in mutual aversion! But here Fate
promised a more consistent future. Here was no transient passion, born
but to die, no will-o'-the-wisp love, leading the lovers over swamps and
perilous places, to expire in a quagmire, but a pure and steady flame
that would light their pathway to the close of life.
Durnford left the chapel with his bride on his arm, half expecting to
meet Squire Bosworth on the threshold, just half an hour too late to
hinder the marriage. He would be likely to guess that the runaway couple
would go straight to Parson Keith. But there was no furious father, only
the jarvey nodding on his box, and a handful of vagabonds and idlers
demanding largesse from the bridegroom, a scurvy crew who always
gathered from the adjacent alleys to stare at the gentry whom Mr. Keith
made happy.
"To Lord Lavendale's, Bloomsbury Square," said Herrick; and then when
they were seated side by side in the coach, he told Irene how Lavendale
had insisted that they should lodge at his house till they had one of
their own, and that they were to take as much time as ever they could in
finding one.
"He has given me a suite of rooms, where we shall be as much alone as if
we had a house all to ourselves," he said.
They found the rooms prepared for them, the servants in attendance, and
an excellent breakfast of chicken and iced champagne on the table.
Lavendale was discreetly absent. The butler told Mr. Durnford that his
lordship was not expected home till the evening.
After breakfast, Durnford proposed that Irene should do a little
shopping, and then it occurred to the bride for the first time that all
her wardrobe was at Fairmile Court.
"And I am to cost you money at the very beginning!" she said dolefully.
"Dearest, it will be bliss to spend my money in such sweet service."
"Ah, but wait! I have twenty guineas in my purse, which my father gave
me a week ago, my quarterly allowance of pocket-money. That will buy all
I shall want for the present; and I daresay he will let me have my
clothes from Fairmile. However angry he may be, he will scarcely insist
upon keeping my clothes."
"It would assuredly be a petty form of resentment. Well, dearest, may I
go shopping with you? or would you rather go alone in a chair?"
"I would rather go with you."
"Then we'll just walk quietly into Holborn, as if we were an old married
couple."
Irene put on her cloak and hood in front of a Venetian glass, while
Herrick walked up and down the room and glanced somewhat uneasily from
the windows, expecting the Squire's arrival.
They had breakfasted in a leisurely fashion, and it was now two o'clock.
There had been ample time for Mr. Bosworth to go to Parson Keith, and
having obtained his information from the parson, who knew the
destination of the newly-married couple, to come on to Bloomsbury
Square. Yet there was still no sign of pursuit. Nor did anything occur
all that afternoon to interrupt the serenity of the bride and
bridegroom. They went together to the mercer's and to the milliner's,
and Irene made her purchases on a very modest scale, and well within the
limits of her pocket-money, while her husband discreetly waited at the
door of the shop, and exercised a patience rare after the halcyon days
of the honeymoon.
"How good you are to wait for me!" said Irene, as she rejoined him;
"shopkeepers are so slow, and they pester one so to buy more than one
wants."
"If you were like Mrs. Skerritt, who haunts every sale-room and bids for
everything she sees, your catalogue of wants would not be completed half
so easily," answered Herrick; "jealous though I am of your absence, I
must own you have been vastly quick."
"But pray who is Mrs. Skerritt?" asked Irene. "Stay, she is the lady who
was so kind to you. I should like to know her."
"Nay, love, I think it were better not, though there are great ladies
who ask her to their houses, and pretend to adore her--Lady Mary
Montagu, for instance. But my young wife must choose her friends with
the utmost discretion."
"I wish for no friends whom you do not care for," said his bride; "and
now, Herrick, when am I to see the new comedy? It is hard that all the
town should have admired my husband's play, while I know so little about
it."
"Shall we go to Drury Lane this evening?"
"I should love to go."
"Then you shall. Lavendale has hired a box for the run of my play--he
always does things in a princely style--and we can have it all to
ourselves this evening. 'Twill be our first public appearance as man and
wife, and all the town will guess we are married, and will envy me my
prize."
They dined, or pretended to dine, at four, and then Lavendale's chariot
drove them to Drury Lane.
What a delight it was for Irene to sit by her lover-husband's side, and
watch and listen while the story of the play unfolded itself--to hear
the audience laugh and applaud at each brisk retort, each humorous or
fondly tender fancy! The play was a story of love and lovers, the old,
old story which has been telling itself ever since creation, and which
yet seems ever new to the actors in it. There were wit and passion and
freshness and manly spirit in Herrick's play, but there was not a single
indecency; and the older school of wits and scribblers wondered
exceedingly how so milk-and-waterish a comedy could take the town. Mrs.
Manley, in a dark little box yonder, whispering behind her fan to a
superannuated buck in a periwig that reached his knees, protested that
the play was the tamest she had ever sat out.
"Tamer than _The Conscious Lovers_," she said, "though poor Dick lived
in such fear of his wife that he dared never give free scope to his wit,
lest Mrs. Molly should take offence at him. O, for the days of Etherege
and Wycherley!"
"Nay, I protest," said the buck, adjusting a stray curl with his
pocket-comb, and ogling the house with weak elderly eyes; "the play may
be decent, but it is not tame. Those scenes between Nancy and Wilks are
vastly fine. Stap my vitals if I have not been between laughing and
crying all the evening; and this is the seventh time I have seen the
piece. I wonder who that pretty creature is in my Lord Lavendale's box,
in a plain gray gown and a cherry-coloured hood? She is the finest
woman--present company excepted--I have ogled for a decade."
"The gentleman sitting beside her is the author of the play," said Mrs.
Manley, screwing up her eyes to peer across the width of the pit. "She
is some vizard Miss that ought to be sitting in the slips, I'll be
sworn."
"Nay, I'll take my oath she is a modest woman."
"But to sit alone in a box with a bachelor, and a notorious rake into
the bargain--Lavendale's boon companion!"
"O, you are talking of the days before the deluge. Mr. Durnford has
turned sober, and sits in Parliament. He is one of the doughtiest
knights in Sir Robert's phalanx--a rising man, madam; and as for
Lavendale, he too has turned sober. One hardly ever meets him at
White's, or any of the other chocolate-houses. I am told he is dying."
"When he is dead you may tell me of his sobriety and I will believe
you," retorted the bluestocking, "but till then forgive me if I doubt
your veracity or your information. It was only last June I saw Lavendale
at Vauxhall intriguing with Lady Judith Topsparkle. I almost knocked
against them in one of the dark walks, and a woman who saunters in a
dark walk at midnight, hanging on the arm of a former lover--"
"Is in a fair way to forget her duty to a latter husband," asserted the
buck, regaling himself with a pinch of smoked rappee out of the handle
of his clouded cane.
Three or four of Durnford's acquaintance came to the box in the course
of the evening, and were duly presented to his bride, whom they had all
recognised as the beauty and heiress of Arlington Street, a star that
had flashed upon the town for a brief space, to disappear into rustic
obscurity.
"I feared, Mrs. Bosworth, that this poor little smoky town of ours was
never again to be illumined by your beauty," said Mr. Philter, who was
one of the first to press an entrance into the box.
"Mrs. Bosworth belongs only to history," said Herrick; "I have the
honour to present you to Mrs. Durnford."
"What, Herrick! you astound me. Can fortune have been so lavish, and can
destiny have been so blind, when your obedient servant Thomas Philter
still sighs and worships at the shrine of beauty a miserable bachelor?"
"I have heard you boast 'tis your own fault," laughed Herrick. "It is
Philter who is wilful and reluctant, not Venus who is unkind."
"I grant that good easy lady has always been gracious," answered the
scribbler gaily; "but how did you manage this business, Durnford? how
reconcile a wealthy landed gentleman to the incongruity of a man of
letters as a son-in-law?"
"Faith, Philter, since the incongruity seemed somewhat irreconcilable,
we have taken the matter into our own hands. 'Twas Parson Keith who tied
the knot, at ten o'clock this morning."
"The Reverend Alexander is the most useful man of the age, and this new
Mayfair chapel is the true gate of Paradise," said Philter; and then
with much flourish he congratulated Irene upon her marriage with his
friend.
"Your father will come round, madam," he said. "They all do. They curse
and rage and stamp and blaspheme for a time, are more furious than in a
fit of podagra; but after a storm comes a calm, and the tyrant softens
to the doating grandfather. No argument so potent as a son and heir to
melt the heart of a wealthy landowner."
"I'm afraid, Philter, your impressions of the paternal character are
mostly derived from the stage," said Durnford. "In a comedy the sternest
parent is obliged to yield. No father's wrath can survive the fifth act.
The curtain cannot come down till the lovers are forgiven. But in actual
life I take it there is such a thing as an obstinate anger which lasts
till the grave. However, we mean to soften Mr. Bosworth, if dutiful
feeling and a proper sense of our own misconduct can soften him."
"Do you mean to tell him you repent, eh, you dog?" asked Philter.
"Not for the world would I utter such a lie. I glory in the rebellion
which has gained me this dearest prize."